Angelica rose and dressed. She left for work in black leather jacket, black wig and dark glasses, looking she hoped not at all like Lady Rice – that wronged, tearful, virtuous, needy creature – but like some important guest’s rather ferocious and determined mistress. She carried a holdall in which, neatly folded (by Jelly: Jelly was good at folding: Angelica was not), were Jelly’s working clothes.
Angelica it was who would step into her chauffeur-driven, hired Volvo at exactly seven forty-eight. Nearly every morning the car was there, parked in Davies Street. She would step into the Volvo as Angelica, step out as Jelly. Once in the car, she would take off Angelica’s wig to reveal Jelly’s short, shiny, straight blonde hair: she would take off her leather jacket and put on a pale blue blazer with brass buttons, made in a cheap, uncrushable fabric. She would drag her hair back behind a pale pink satin headband, and hang a long string of artificial pearls round her neck, to fall over her tight, white woollen jumper. She wore a bra which under-played her breasts: the tightness of the sweater was more to do with fashion than sexuality. She would wipe off her more extravagant make-up and put on owl glasses. She would become Jelly White, with Angelica’s knowledge and consent.
But occasionally the Volvo was not there, not waiting in Davies Street when she left the hotel. The car service was stretched that time of the morning, they would explain. Or they were short of drivers; there was a flu epidemic. Could she wait? Half an hour, perhaps? And she could not, and would have to travel to work by public transport. Then she would make the ego change in a Ladies’ room at the Inns of Court, so boldly entering the passages marked ‘Private’, passing without shame through doors marked ‘Staff Only’, to find this safe, high, private, empty, well-disinfected, slightly odorous place, leaving with so prim and self-righteous a mien that in neither personality was she ever challenged.
But she preferred the back of the Volvo: the darkened windows, the stiff back of the driver the other side of the glass, leather upholstery made sticky by the contact of flesh, albeit her own.
And there she would be as Jelly White, she of the highly developed super-ego, the eye for detail, the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, and the self-righteousness, the priggishness that goes with it; a clean, tidy, cologne-scented, unambitious young woman with a self-image not high, not low, but realistic, well aware of her own virtues, her own faults; Daddy’s girl, the one who stays safe for his sake, who never ventures far, who marries someone reliable and nice on the right day at the right time, the one in whom incestuous desires are decently repressed, the one in whom deceit runs rampant, the one to whom lies come naturally, and are always justified, the one to whom rank and order of authority matter; Jelly, for this reason, fit to be underpaid and overworked, the one who stays late to get the mail done, the one just occasionally to pursue the flirtation with the boss, and sue for sexual harassment later. Office bait: a sweet smile, a gentle look, but an eye for the main chance. Daddy never frowned on that. ‘You get what you can out of it, my girl! Never be the boss; no, use the boss.’
While you’re at the office, incognito, Jelly is the girl to be. No use being Angelica, anyway: life would be one long error, Tippex spill and misfiling: one long chafing under instruction: a yearning for freedom, a throwing open of windows to let the air in, and letting wind and rain in instead, to everyone’s dismay.
Angelica would threaten Brian Moss’s marriage to the sweet and domestic Oriole as Jelly never would. The Jellys of the world, sealed off from real emotion, seldom create it in others. Lust, yes: yearning, no. They sit at the office desk and one might be another. Angelicas come singly, and because they suffer, also inflict suffering.
Angelica tried out Jelly’s role for size, and found that not only did it fit, but could be discarded easily. Jelly put up no resistance: she was wonderfully practical: good at emergencies; never dithered: nor threw her hands in the air nor acted like a startled child.
Sir Edwin arranged a meeting with Lady Rice and her solicitor Barney Evans at Brian Moss’s office. It was easy enough for Jelly to allege a sudden migraine, pretend to take a taxi home, then slip into the powder room and turn into Lady Rice: take off the owl glasses, pull a little black velvet hat down over her hair, change the city high heels for a steadier, more country kind, put on blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick, adjust the expression on her face and there she was, an unhappy version of a once happy Lady Rice, and all Sir Edwin’s fault.
The powder room where Jelly achieved this transformation was one of the original back bedrooms of the pleasant Georgian house where Catterwall & Moss made their home, haphazardly converted. The room was high and large; plaster flaked from the ceiling. Thick cream paint covered the walls and ancient plumbing alike. Draughts whistled under the doors. Go into the loo as typist, adopt the body language of those who command, rather than those commanded, and come out the client.
As it happened, Sir Edwin had not turned up.
‘Just as well,’ said Jelly. ‘There’d only have been a scene.’
‘Chickened out,’ said Angelica, and retired for a time, defeated, disappointed in spite of herself.
‘I love him,’ moaned Lady Rice. ‘If only I could just see him, meet him, talk things over, he’d realise that he really loves me; he couldn’t possibly prefer Anthea to me.’
And so on. Lady Rice went back to the powder room and changed into Jelly again, by-passing Angelica. Jelly realised she need not defer to Angelica. She had her own existence.